Match Made on Pandora
by kk4everfighting
Summary: A narrative by Patricia Tannis about her love life that I wrote for a short story assignment for school.


A Match Made on Pandora

"It's Patricia Tannis here" I chime into my ECHO recorder, "but I'm sure you know that, assuming I talked to you pretty much every single day since arriving on this desolate planet."

With a heavy sigh, I set down the device, shaking my head. Technology is unpredictable and corrupt at times, so I chose to write my tale instead.

This is a tale of love, meant for those lust-filled youngsters all across the barren planet of Pandora as they search for their path among the carcasses and wreckage of the world. True love does not walk up to you and slap you with its mechanical arm, screaming incoherent words with some sort of special meaning, all while toasting some fine white bread to your liking. That's all completely off topic as I now realize, but this story will surely make it more understandable.

It all began with the first person of interest: a young gentleman by the name of Earl. That is if you consider a crazy scrapyard owner constantly holed up in his shack a "gentleman". Either way, some strange force must have compelled him to find me attractive. He had sent me a few creepy poems via ECHO recording, comparing me to skag innards and describing how his "heart sings like the cry of a ravaging rakk". I'll admit, I felt flattered, and took up his offer. I trekked out to Crazy Earl's scrapyard, a huge dump with vehicle parts and various trash scattered around in enormous heaps. It baffled me how he could possibly survive out there on his own, isolated from any living creature within miles, aside from a few bandits that dared to raid his dump, as well as his beloved pet skag, Scrappy, cleverly named.

As I arrived at Crazy Earl's single-room shack, I wondered if I was slipping into insanity, as pursuing a potential love interest in a garbage dump was not an everyday routine. It wasn't even a monthly routine. Nevertheless, I trudged up to his door, knocking and humming a simple tune.

"What'chu want?" he snarled through his metal grate before realizing the woman before him and clearing his throat, his face turning a color similar to a ripe berry. "You actually came."

His scruffy voice sounded overly excited, as though he had never been in contact with a female human being, which was surprisingly true. As I later discovered, when the Vault Hunters visited him later on, Lilith, the skilled siren, was actually the second female he had ever contacted with ever since he had moved into that scrapyard after leaving his family.

His tale brings me sadness, which I'll point out is an extremely rare occurrence lately. Everything is strange and corrupt and does not deserve my feelings, especially pathetic ones like sadness.

To my surprise, he also allowed me into his home, giving me an exclusive sighting of his full body which is always hidden behind his metal door. You see, from his little window he looks like a frail older man, with his small, square, black mustache and thin, gray hair drawing attention from the heavy wrinkles above his brow hinting at his age. From this small impression, I assumed that he would merely be an average looking man, yet his true appearance left me completely speechless.

Crazy Earl's family consisted of bandits and refugees in a slightly more civilized bandit clan. They were stationed in a barren area in the Dust, taking in a few Hodunk refugees, abandoned by their clan. Earl's father was one of those Hodunk refugees, giving him his hillbilly lifestyle. However, his mother was a midget bandit, which was clearly visible in his smaller than average stature.

It was almost cute, actually, Due to this slight drawback, he had to use an unstable blue milk crate to peek out of the window on the door. After a while of using that every day, the crate caved in and he replaced it with a stack of history books, causing me to cringe at the waste of knowledge.

Once I was able to get past his appearance, we sat around his kitchen table, which was simply a slab of metal on top of a stack of old tires. The center had some sort of a strange, dried up plant which I considered bringing home for experiments as I had never seen one like it before. A curious little red flower bloomed off of the top, bringing me even more questions of the species of the specimen.

The day passed with hardly any talking, and when he did speak it came out as unintelligent garble to me. However, he seemed to take extreme interest of Eridian artifacts. He loved the intriguing history and myths of the Eridian guardians who protected the resources beneath the surface of Pandora. Luckily, I had been carrying a piece of a key to the legendary Vault, which was a gold mine for Eridian history. His eyes were practically glistening at the sight of the object, so I chose to let him hold onto it. This turned out to be a big mistake.

"Where on Pandora did you find this?" he questioned me in shocked tone as he turned the item over in his hands. I explained my discovery of the ruins, which I had been stationed at during that time. However, I noticed that he seemed extremely oblivious as I spoke. The artifact seemed to enchant him in a way that was absolutely revolting. The suspicious effects of the Eridium element embedded in the key fragment led to a crazy chain of events which I choose not to describe, thus eliminating him from my list of potential partners.

Option number two was nothing more than a petty crush on a helpful, yet cute, siren with the group of Vault Hunters. Yet it went nowhere so I'll continue to the last victim: a fine salesman by the name of Marcus Kincaid.

Marcus, the owner of Marcus Munitions, is a beefy man with a booming voice as he tries to convince you to purchase his weapons to defend against the forces of evil. He is actually quite interesting, yet his big ego is a major flaw. The way he talks of his products becomes obnoxious over time as you see and hear many advertisements by him and ridiculous imitations of the illiterate mechanic Scooter. However, his style of "wooing" me was far more flattering than any others before.

Marcus came up to me out of the blue one day after settling in his new shop by my current research station. With the help of the Vault Hunters, he gathered resources to fancy himself up before marching up to my station. His arrival actually frightened me as I was intensely studying a strange specimen I had found by a bandit corpse just outside of the Tartarus Station, which seemed to be imbedded with wires and some sort of electrified substance.

After warning him to never risk his life like that again, he approached me with a handful of blade grass flowers. While they aren't the most fragrant species, and certainly not the most attractive, I happily accepted them and put them in the jar with the bandit's brain, yet for some reason they are not flourishing despite the encouraging words I give them daily.

Aside from the pathetic flowers, Marcus also had a rugged suit and reeked of something foul.

"Patricia Tannis, I'm sure you know that almost everybody thinks that you are insane, but I think that you are finer than a legendary Jakob's rifle," he complimented in his typical salesperson voice.

"Well, I'm sure that must be sweet if you find that sort of thing 'fine', but I find this whole get-up revolting," I responded, gesturing at his outfit and questioning the awful stench that wafted around him. After discovering it was from musk glands of rabid skags, I raged to him about animal cruelty.

"It's absolutely disgusting," I said, "to imagine that you hired the Vault Hunters to brutally murder hideous yet purely innocent creatures to simply rub their excrements all over your skin. What if they have families? Did you think of that at all?"

He was speechless, of course, and I ushered him out of my shack. I heard that afterwards he went on to murder more creatures to binge on fried rakk meat to get over rejection. Yet of course he didn't perform this crime on his own as he hired the Vault Hunters once again, this time sending them out to Sander's Gorge.

After this event, I felt a strange feeling of emptiness. It had been a long time since I had faced defeat like that, the last time being the day I lost an argument with my ECHO recorder.

That thought gave me an idea. While I still wasn't on steady terms with the device, it made me realize that technology might be the answer. It took over an hour of searching through my files, but I eventually found a specific blueprint that had been stowed away for years. After examining the plans, it came to my realization that it would require many mechanical parts that were not in my possession. Since such field work was not in my expertise, I chose to ask for help. I almost considered visiting Earl for his assistance, since I was sure he would have some spare parts lying around, but after my previous experience I refused to make any contact with him ever again. My only option was the hard working Vault Hunters.

It took weeks to gather enough gears, wires, and motherboard pieces to build my contraption, yet they got it done. Thankfully I had begun this quest during the Claptrap Revolution where all CL4P-TP units were revolting against the Hyperion Corporation, their creators, and just humans in general. This allowed the group to easily obtain the parts that I required as they could rip out these fresh mechanical pieces while saving humanity from the menacing metal threat that ravaged across Pandora.

Eventually they gathered over three hundred robot parts and I was able to finish my amazing creation: the one and only Tannis Bot 3000. She was magnificent and efficient. Not only could she talk, collect data, and do the chimichanga, but she also had a brilliant toaster setting, completing the list of all the things I want in a person, or in this case a machine.

Of course I chose to pick Tannis Bot as my lifelong partner, choosing to tie the knot with the help of Moxxi's personal robot. He was strange and tried flirting with Tannis Bot, but since she's programmed to be like me, the crude words were ineffective and we continued with the magical event.

In the end, I found eternal happiness with a mechanical version of myself, proving love is strange in many ways yet it can be found in different places, yet it all depends on your own preferences. Sometimes love can be a virus, causing you to twitch and shout nonsense while burning every piece of bread given to you. Love can cause you to go insane and question the meaning of the world while losing all interest in everything around you while the flowers in your brain jar wilt before your very eyes. Wait, what was I saying?


End file.
